7
Questions with Cheetah Chrome
(regarding Peter Laughner and "Ain't
It Fun")
by: Cheese Borger |
How
did you two meet?
I met Peter through an ad in the
Plain Dealer for, I believe, a guitarist and drummer.
I remember the ad specifically mentioning the Stooges,
and so I called up and we arranged to hook up at some
little bar on W. 6th St. that was near the infamous loft
(and had excellent chili). By the way, the RFTT tapes
and that Frankenstein "eve of the DB's" EP were both recorded
in the same room in that loft. Anyway, we got on all right,so
we decided to have a jam.
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Do
you remember the first time you 2 jammed together?
I believe me, Blitz, his cousin
and a case of Rolling Rock made it down to a jam one night.
Also present may have been Tony Maimone and Tim Wright,
possibly Pete's wife Charlotte.
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You
2 wrote "Aint It Fun" together, right?
Yep, sure did.
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Who
wrote the words, who wrote the licks?
I had the music written before I
met Pete, one of a couple of songs I brought to the party
when we hooked up (also What Love Is, Transfusion, Never
Gonna Kill Myself Again, Down in Flames, the basics for
Amphetamine and of course, Sonic) Pete came up with these
amazing lyrics, I'm not sure if he had them before or
not.
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What
did ya think of the Guns & Roses version?
A little polished for my taste,
but they can cover any of my songs they want to anytime.
Slash and Duff are real gentlemen.
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What
is your favorite memory with Peter?
We hadn't hung out in quite some
time, and after the famous incident where Patti Smith
threw him offstage, I was hanging out after hours at
CB's, smoking a joint with Cosmo and Charlie, the light
and sound guys at Cb's. We hear this banging at the
front door, and when we open it, it's Pete. We ended
up at my place drinking, playing records, shootin the
shit, all that good happy crappy, just like the old
days when we were still in Rockets. He went back to
CLE the next day. The next time I saw him was a little
over a month later, at his wake. Before we left I put
a little guitar ear ring of mine in his hand, and I
hope it's still there.
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What
is your funniest Peter Story?
When Charlotte threw a platform shoe at him for licking
beer off of a local groupie's tits and broke his nose.
He was throwing up blood all the next day.
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I
used to get my haircuts, every six weeks in a basement,
on Coventry drive, in Parma. My older cousin Larry (Two
and a-half years) played guitar in a band which practiced
down there. The band was SARAH BLUE, and two of them motherfuckers
were CHEETAH CHROME and JOHNNY BLITZ.
One poster on the wall was of JIMI HENDRIX,with a caption
of "See you in the next world, don't be late"
or some shit like that. And another pronounced: WMMS Where
Music Means Something.
Anon |
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